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Thursday, June 12, 2014

NASTO Notes 2014

Every year representatives of the state DOTs of the Northeast
states (and assorted interested folks like me) gather to hear panels, exchange
information, and socialize.This
is the annual meeting of NASTO (Northeast Association of State Transportation
Officials), one of four regional groups in the US.It’s not only a great place to exchange news and views but a
great place to get a sense of what’s happening in state transportation circles.This year’s conference was held in
beautiful Portsmouth, NH and hosted by New Hampshire DOT (great job NHDOT
folks!).

Some impressions:

Climate Change –
This topic may not be taken seriously in some places, but it is a huge concern
among Northeast DOTs.A session on
Climate Change Resilience and Sustainability, chaired by Sue Minter of Vermont
(where Irene made believers of just about everybody) demonstrated some big
advances.Kate Zyla of Georgetown
Climate Center gave an update on the work of the Transportation and Climate
Initiative (website here).If
you’re not familiar with TCI, it’s a remarkable collaborative effort of the
transportation, energy, and environment agencies of the 11 Northeast states and
DC.(I am not impartial, having a
bit of a paternal interest, as I helped facilitate getting the group started a
couple of years ago.)Another
remarkable collaborative effort is being undertaken by 50 climate scientists
and transportation engineers in the northeast.Jennifer Jacobs of the University of New Hampshire gave a
briefing on the Infrastructure and Climate Network (ICNet, website here) which
is sponsoring workshops, webinars, and pilot projects that connect high-level
scientific findings on climate change and extreme weather events with practical
engineering design guidelines.Niek
Veraart of the Louis Berger Group showcased some innovative new projects for
sustainability in Hoboken, NJ, and Staten Island and Long Island. The concern
for resiliency in these places, of course, was prompted by the flooding caused
by Sandy.Mike Meyer of Parsons
Brinckerhoff gave an update on the new National Climate Assessment and some
other new reports that continue to expand our knowledge of the science and the
range of possible responses.At a
more practical level, a panel on Storm Coordination demonstrated how seriously
the operations and maintenance folks are preparing for future extreme weather
events.A much talked about
touchstone for all these discussions was the recent New York Times story
reporting on how the Northeast states have managed to reduce emissions and
increase economic growth at the same time (here).

Northeast Corridor
– Another topic of special interest to the region is the future of the
Northeast Corridor rail spine.Chronically underfunded, stuck in an organizational nightmare, despised
by a majority in the House of Representatives – and yet perhaps the biggest key
to transportation and economic development in the Northeast.Mitch Warren, of the Northeast Corridor
Commission, set up by Congress to make recommendations for the future, gave an
update.Brett Taylor, of Delaware,
gave the perspective of states on the corridor, who continue to invest heavily
in improvements from their own resources.Outlook?A final report is
due this year.We’ll see what
happens.Rich Davey of
Massachusetts gave a peek at one key opportunity.MassDOT hopes to significantly expand South Station in
Boston, with new tracks, more platforms, and significant joint development
opportunities.And Rich says these
improvements will speed up service from Back Bay to South Station, the slowest
mile on the whole Corridor.

Freight – There
was a good panel on freight, but I’ll just mention two key takeaways from the
presentation by Louis Renjel of CSX.First, coal traffic is way down (confirming what looks to be a permanent
decline), but the railroad has been able to compensate by increasing intermodal
traffic.Second, CSX is changing
its network from a corridor model to a hub-and-spoke model, borrowed from UPS
and FedEx.Both trends are
important – and encouraging – for transportation and land use planners.

Funding –
Surprisingly, there was little talk of funding problems at this
conference.Why?I think partially because almost half
of the states in the region have gotten funding packages through their
legislatures in the past couple of years.More to do, but still a pretty good track record – and at a time when
pundits in Washington say nobody will support gas tax increases!Speaking of Washington, Sen. Jeanne
Shaheen gave a synopsis of the situation in Congress.She attempted to put a positive spin on the chances for
MAP-21 extension, but without any real evidence to give much hope (and this was
a day before Eric Cantor went down, which I think makes our chances even
worse).Two Shaheen statements to
comment on:“Failure is not an
option.”Agree completely!“We need to be creative.”Half agree.Yes, we need to be creative to design and build a 21st
century transportation system and an appropriate long-term funding system.No, we don’t need to be creative to
solve the immediate (say, 5-year) funding problem.We just need the votes to raise the bloody gas tax!

Performance
management – The DOTs of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire explained in
some detail their work in developing robust performance management systems in
their agencies, including much work in agreeing on common performance
measures.The content is too
complicated to get into here, but a very important takeaway is the conclusion
all three states have come to that good performance management increases
confidence in their legislatures and their publics and leads to more
investment!

Memorial Bridge –
This new lift bridge, connecting New Hampshire and Maine, is the pride and joy
of New Hampshire DOT, the lead agency, and they took every opportunity to show
off the impressive and innovative engineering achievements in designing and
building it.We can build great
things in this country!